Product Description
Moving effortlessly between satire and sympathy, Edith Wharton paints a gleaming portrait of 1920s New York society. At its centre is Pauline Manford, indefatigable hostess and do-gooder, who rules her family with ruthless charm, Dexter the generous lawyer who is her second husband, Arthur her ramshackle first husband, Nona, her gentle daughter, and son Jim, married to the exqisite Lita. When the preposterous Marchesa arrives on the scene, trailing debts and problems, Pauline strives with increasing desperation to keep her family together, too busy to recognise the threatening truth until it explodes in a tragi-comic catastrophe.
Ingram
Wharton's superb satirical novel of the Jazz Age--originally published in 1927. Taking her title from the sleep induced through medication to ease the pain during childbirth, Edith Wharton sketches a portrait of a society eager to escape the pain of everyday life through drugs and alcohol, secret sexual alliances, immersion in work, and the pursuit and capricious squandering of money.
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Paperback
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